November 24, 2009

I loves me some great percussion and I’m always taken by a silky smooth bass lick. This song has both and, best yet, here it is, live (no studio gimmicks, no retakes). For years, every time I’d be hanging with the Usual Suspects (where music is a constant), as the part of the song that contains the bass lick would approach, I’d slam the brakes on the multiple ongoing conversations, and it would go something like this:

I’m glad to see you are better and back to posting!
And yes, bass is one of the great udnerappreciated instruments of our time…me, I’m a big fan of Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers; with his talents the band oft substituted bass for guitar when it came time for an instrumental “lead”…at least in their better days, before they became FM radio pulp…

Nah, I’m calling shenanigans on this one. I saw a documentary on the making of this song, and Paul Simon demonstrated how they constructed that lick by recording half the bass line, then reversing it, splicing them together and dubbing it into the main track. Not to mention the bass player’s slapping style doesn’t match the lick.

Massa Jim,
I can’t tell anything against Paul Simon: he is my “heartthrob” since I was eleven, and “The Boxer” started to play in our radios, here in Brazil.
This “south-african way” of his is SUPERB!!
Get well soon!!